TAKE YOUR SEATS!

AJune 1983

OWNED SINCE MILEAGE SINCE LAST REPORT TOTAL MILEAGE LATEST COSTS

74,361 £0

fter a mere 21 years of dithering, work has finally started on undoing the damage vandals did to my beloved Cambridge. The venue is the busy premises of Aldridge Trimming, which is highly regarded around the world and employs computers to make panels and cutting materials.

Renovating the Cambridge is thus all in a day’s work. It was decided that the slashing of the front seats was too severe to do anything other than replace the facings with new pleated leather in a matching colour.

The first task involves remove the old covering on the seat back. After a careful series of light and heavy tugs, the seat comes off in one piece, complete with the vynide on the side. The cotton wadding that goes under the leather was also good enough to reuse.

If you know what you’re doing, the seat squabs unclip and pull off without ripping. Under these is the original foam, which has survived remarkably well. It was amazing to see the 55-year-old red crayon markings on this in strange BMC code, obviously instructions from when the seats were originally put together.

Would you believe that under the leather and wadding on the back seats is horsehair? This was the case in many cars well into the 1980s, including Porsches. Yuppies would surely have dropped their paving slab-sized mobile phones into the champagne fountain had they know that their Guards Red 911 actually contained bits of old carthorse! Although this hair can deteriorate to the point where the seats could feel uncomfortable enough to convince you that a few hooves and horseshoes had also been thrown into the mix, it was in first class condition on the Cambridge.

Nursing the seats back to health was no problem for Albridge’s specialists and I’m looking forward to getting the Cambridge back home once all the work’s finished.